baby's first interview

in october, i believe it was? maybe i’m wrong. i participated in SAIC’s ExFest which is the yearly time-arts festival that is organized by SAIC’s ExTV. though i had already graduated, they accepted submissions from students who had created it during the previous semester. i felt so entirely validated and excited to have won the jury award and i keep my little acrylic award visible on a book shelf in my livingroom. i was asked to be interviewed for ExTV’s blog and i have been patiently awaiting the release of my interview. the students did a wonderful job editing clips of my video into the interview (though im disappointed with the sound quality of interview itself) and watching the interview for the first time brought a tear to mine eye.

the video i was interviewed about, Tell us about what happened that November, was an experiment for me. i dont write very often, nor do i particularly enjoy writing. i find that it is much easier for me to express myself through simple conversation or via emails - essentially, when i have a sounding board at the ready. but i wrote the story of this video, basing it on something that happened in my own life. in 2013 i entered into the deepest depression of my life which was catalyzed by a series of events, most notably being ghosted and gaslighted by someone i trusted. “depression” these days can be somewhat cliché. but there was a nine month period where i was simply “going through the motions” (when i wasn’t spending eight hours at a stretch scream crying on my sofa. no really. eight full hours.), writing lists of “reasons not to kill myself” (there was really only one thing on the list at the time: my cat), not eating, and basically slowly killing myself with sadness and killing my social self with admittedly textbook insane, compulsive behaviors. i thank my lucky stars every day, though, for having gone through that. its true what they say about trauma: you come out of it a whole new person. what a body really needs is to cry, cry, cry and scream until your face retains a red and bloated appearance for months on end and your body starts to almost literally shrink because you havent eaten more than 300 calories a day and you shit your pants two or three times because you chug nyquil to help you sleep (it doesnt help you sleep) and then it slides right out of you because your body is empty inside or rather your body isnt your body, your orifices no longer belong to you, you can not touch them because you dont know where they are because you dont know where you are, you dont know where you left your self, who took you, and when things go into the holes, they dont go into your body, they go into that empty space that is at the center of your body that youre reluctantly carrying around and then those things come right back out the other end. this is a what it takes for a body to be born. i was born on march 27th, 2014.

this interview, for me, is the cap on the bottle, the lid on the jar, the flush of the toilet of a thing that happened, a thing i put into one hole of my body that slipped right back out through the opposite end. wanna see it? its here. validation. validation makes fills a hole.